Felipe Nasr revealed his winning Daytona 24 Hours final stint was dominated by hitting fuel numbers, the Brazilian said at the post-race press conference.
“The race really came down to the wire at the very final stop,” he said in response to a question from MotorsportWeek.com about his mindset in that final stint.
“It was pretty much all about the fuel numbers. Each one was the energy numbers we were reaching. I just have to say that was a great call from the team, from Porsche Penske Motorsports, just to give me the opportunity to be in the lead again in that final part of the race, and then it was down to me to hit the numbers and keep the 31 behind.”
The Porsche Penske team short fueled Nasr’s #7 Porsche 963, knowing it was vital to get the Brazilian out in front of their rival for the win, Tom Blomqvist in the #31 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R.
The team filled the car slightly less than the Cadillac, and subsequently Nasr was able to pull away out of his pit box earlier than Blomqvist, and get that all-important track position.
“All I can say is the race only finishes at the checkered flag, and until then, nothing is — there’s no decision until then,” said the Brazilian.
“But man, 24 hours of racing, to be going that way, it does give you a lot of emotions in the end. I just knew it was not over yet. I just kept the focus until the finish line. There was a lot of traffic going through, as well, when the 31 was keeping up the pressure.
“But I’m glad it came our way. After all the hard work, the difficult year we had in 2023, especially here, I feel this is the best gift we could give ourselves. Very pleased for the team, for the whole work they’ve done all week,” concluded the 31-year-old.
Blomqvist and his struggle to get by
Meanwhile, Blomqvist also spoke to reporters at the press conference about the nail biting final stint and the race with Nasr to the final lap.
“[It] kind of came down to that last couple of stints there. I was slowly chipping away, managed to close the gap. Then we decided to take an early stop to try and undercut them, which we didn’t really manage, and thankfully I was able to get by on track.
“But the whole goal there was we had to then make a gap because obviously we were going to have a little bit longer stoppage time at the next stop, and unfortunately I get that yellow basically ended our chances really, because especially where we are on the pit lane, coming under yellow and not really being able to react to the car behind in terms of pulling early, for example.
That hurt us really. I think it was going to be a bit closer if that yellow hadn’t have came out because I felt there at the end of the race we had the pace advantage.
Once both cars had pitted, it was up to the drivers to make the difference — but unfortunately Blomqvist could not find his way past Nasr.
“It was just so difficult to pass. The Porsche was really strong on the straight. We were really good in the infield. It was hard to make anything count.
“It just felt like there wasn’t the cars there at the end of the race, in terms of the traffic to kind of find an opportunity, and Felipe there at the end, I think he did one small mistake where he went wide by a few meters, but other than that, there was no opportunity.
“Yeah, hats off to them. They were fantastic really.”
